I'm sure even the KGB station chief in Washington, D.C. is mulling this one over: Why did Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the incoming chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the No. 2 Democrat on the committee, have divergent reactions to word about the new CIA chief?

AP Photo/Kevin WolfLeon Panetta, in a 2006 photo, when he was serving on the Iraq Study Group.

Feinstein - as well as the top-ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, both expressed dissatisfaction after hearing reports that President-elect Barack Obama plans to nominate former budget director and congressman Leon Panetta to head the CIA.

Feinstein, a California Democrat, said she hadn't been consulted in advance and was concerned about Panetta's lack of experience in the spy world. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time," she said in a statement.

Wyden, however, said he had talked with the Obama transition team about Panetta and said in his own statement:

"Leon Panetta is a smart, savvy DC veteran and a strong choice to lead the CIA. Having known him since we served together in the House of Representatives, I believe he has the skills to usher in a new era of accountability at the nation's premier intelligence agency."

It appears that at least a bit of the problem is that word of Panetta's appointment leaked out before Feinstein could be briefed.

But it also looks like Wyden is more willing than Feinstein to upend the intelligence establishment. Supposedly, a major factor in Obama's pick of Panetta is that he represents a sharp break with Bush administration policy, whether it involves surveillance of Americans or CIA interrogation tactics that critics said amounted to torture.

That seems to be exactly what Wyden wants. Note the rest of his statement:

For too long our nation's intelligence community has operated under a policy of questionable effectiveness and legality in which consulting two member of the Senate Intelligence Committee counted as "consulting with Congress. I look forward to working with Mr. Panetta to declassify much of the story of what went wrong at the CIA these last eight years, so that we can both take steps to make Americans safer and protect the values that define us as Americans.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. However, given the murky world of the intelligence community, this is one Washington drama that may play out mostly behind the scenes.

SIDE NOTE: I knew Panetta when I covered the California congressional delegation more than 25 years ago, and he was a favorite of reporters. He was friendly, gregarious and willing to explain in plain terms how things worked. That by itself makes him a pretty unique figure to head the CIA.